Expert Q&A Sessions, Gardening, Part 3: What are the most “bang-for-your-buck” gardening purchases?

Question: If someone had a $200 budget to start a vegetable garden from scratch right now, how would you tell them to spend it to get the most value? What are the most "bang-for-your-buck" purchases? This can be common sale items or just overall value.
Luios1013: To start, I recommend picking up fabric raised garden beds. "Smart Pot" is the most popular name-brand maker, but you can get generic ones that are a little less expensive and work just as well in the short-term. There's a 6x3x1ft one on Amazon [amazon.com] that'll run you about $20, and can support 18 vegetable seedlings, but they also come in all shapes and sizes if you want to have smaller pots you can space out.

Fabric pots are great because they're less of an investment than a traditional raised bed, they're easier to move around, and if you need to you can fully break them down without taking up much space.

I'd put the bulk of the remaining money into buying good-quality soil, compost and seedlings. For a bed sized above, you'd probably need around 6 bags of raised bed soil (2-cubic feet/bag) and about 3 bags of compost. Costs can vary greatly here, but I'm estimating about $140 here.

I'd use the bulk of the remaining $40 to buy some seeds and seedlings. If you have a window in your house that gets good sunlight, you can save a ton of money by growing your plants from seed. If not, seedlings cost around $4 each in my area. I usually end up using a mix of both.

Make sure to leave a little budget for basic tools. A trowel is a must to get things planted, and you'll likely appreciate having a weeder hand tool too, but both of those can be the most budget-friendly models available.

One thing you may want to spend a little more on is a good watering can. If you don't have a garden, you might not have a hose set up either, so you'll be spending a lot of time using your watering can if so. Getting one that's easy to fill, nice to hold and that has a rose-style spout that distributes water nicely will make your day-to-day so much easier. I'm not saying you have to spend hundreds on this, but going a couple steps above the cheapest models will pay off in the long run.

Question: What's the best gardening deal you've ever found?
Luios1013: I was stoked about this deal on soil and mulch that was posted a couple months back. Interestingly, the didn't change here, but it still offered incredible savings. One user figured out that if you added at least 7 bags of mulch or soil to your cart at Lowes, then also a 5-gallon Lowe's bucket, shipping for your order would be free no matter how many bags of soil/mulch your ordered.

The OP described getting a $69 shipping quote for 12 bags of soil or 7 bags of mulch. With this trick, they were able to order 30 bags of mulch and 20 bags of soil with free shipping.
I run through tons of mulch and soil each year, but because I don't have a truck and my driveway is too steep to allow for easy bulk dropoff, I'm forced to buy both by the bag. This means I'm either packing my sedan to the gills with bags or shelling out a ton of money to have them delivered, so this deal was a dream come true for me.